Workers in hospitals, nursing homes, and private homes often face the challenge of moving a (partly or completely incapacitated) patient from one support surface (e.g., a bed, gurney, stretcher, examination or operating room table, etc.) to another such surface. The patient may need to be placed onto another support surface based on, among other things, a need for more comfort or to be brought to a desired area within a hospital. For instance, nurses or other hospital personnel (e.g., orderlies) may first physically move a patient from a hospital bed to a gurney, which is then relocated to a surgery or an examination room. When the gurney carrying the patient arrives at the desired area, the nurses or orderlies may again physically move the patient onto another bed or table.
Such manual patient transfer maneuver is both physically and psychologically demanding on the worker, not to mention the patient. The typical process involves a team of two or more caregivers first lifting and then sliding the patient's body sideways from the first surface to the next. Because the two support surfaces typically have to be positioned side-by-side, at least half the transfer team is in an awkward position at any given point during the transfer, having to help lift the patient while they are bending and reaching over one of the surfaces. This can be fairly hazardous, particularly if one of the support surfaces starts moving midstream. Large or obese patients are especially challenging, which is compounded by the fact that many caregivers tend to be petite in stature.
Because of the patient transfer demands, health care workers who have patient transfer duties are at high risk for back pain and injuries resulting in, among other things, lost time at work or worker compensation claims. It goes without saying that the patients are likewise at risk due to falls or the like when caregivers are inadequate to meet the physical and psychological demands of transferring the patient.
A survey of existing systems and methods suggests that there is no widely adopted safe, simple, and effective technique for transferring patients from one support surface to another. Rather, currently used systems and methods suffer from, among other things, one or more of the following drawbacks: being expensive to manufacture or implement (e.g., cannot be used with convention support surfaces), consisting of many complicated mechanical components, resulting in patient or worker discomfort through use, being too large for the limited space in hospital and assisted care rooms to be portable, or requiring a large amount of time or number of workers to effectuate the transfer.
As one example, a currently used system requires one or more workers to pull a patient across a device as the device supports the patient and rolls from one surface to another. In such a device, the patient's back is uncomfortably supported by a belt which passes over and around a number of rollers assembled within a device frame. As another example, a currently used system comprises a device that is too large to conveniently be used indoors (e.g., in a hospital setting). In addition, such device includes a belt having a rotation parallel to a length of the device thereby requiring a longer amount of time to effectuate a transfer of a subject from a first support surface to a second support surface.
It is with this recognition of the foregoing state of the technology that the present assemblies and methods directed to a portable patient conveyor have been conceived and are now set forth in text and drawings associated with this patent document.